


Playing House

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Antisemitism, Bisexuality, F/F, F/M, Innuendo lyrics, Kid Tony, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Multi, Polyamory, Singing, Tony's Mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:59:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie Martinelli doesn't believe she deserves very much. She's wrong.</p>
<p>There are many things Tony Stark doesn't know about his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing House

**Author's Note:**

> No betas used. All mistakes mine.
> 
> To the tune of Lou Monte's "[Che La Luna Mezzo Mare](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9FMvfvkBro)." Innuendo-filled lyrics [here](http://lyricstranslate.com/en/c039e-la-luna-mezz039o-mare-theres-moon-middle-sea.html).

Angie plays house with Peggy and Howard for years. Before that, it was just her and English, roommates pretending very poorly that kissing in the back of movie theaters and sleeping in the same bed was only evidence of a deeply felt friendship rather than a romance. Peggy loved her automatically with no explanation or question of it. Angie was content to love her back and tell herself it wasn’t that sort of love because she dated men.

Then came Howard, larger than life and perfectly casual as he strolled through his (their) apartment. “Land lord calling! How are my Sapphic Sallies?”

“What’s a Sapphic?” Angie eats a dinner roll from his (their) kitchen. Her cheeks are stuffed like a chipmunk’s. “Like a sap?”

Howard Stark is all snark. “‘Boston marriage’? ‘Lesbians’?”

Angie stops eating. “What, me and English?”

Peggy strolls into the kitchen. “Angie, dear, ignore him. Howard, do leave her alone.”

But Howard’s the one who looks embarrassed. “Oh. I thought, um. You’re a couple, aren’t you?”

“Look, I like men just like you like women,” says Angie quickly. “And Peggy had a thing with Steve!”

“Some people like both.” Howard looks shy. He doesn’t like not knowing things.

Angie would have let it lie, but she likes to poke at things, you know? Her whole family has the compulsion to do it. “Do you like both, Howard?”

“Sure.” Howard looks at them, waiting to hear their reply. When the only thing that happens is Peggy raises an eyebrow, he seems emboldened. “Yeah, I like both.”

Peggy snorts. “You mean you like men and women both or you like women and Steve?”

Before that moment, Angie had never seen Howard blush. “You’re not the only one who noticed he was gorgeous, Peg.”

Peggy seems curious.

Angie just stares. It seems so obvious, in retrospect, but at that moment, it’s as if the rules have been re-written for her. She sits on this idea, that the rules—if there are any rules to begin with—are not what she thought they were.

A few weeks later, she intertwines her fingers with Peggy’s in bed. She shies away from saying, “I love you,” words that loom large and terrifying. “You’re wonderful,” she whispers.

“You are, too.” Peggy kisses her with a full, beautiful mouth.

“Let’s be together,” Angie says.

Peggy cracks up, her breath hot as it runs along Angie’s face. “I suppose Howard’s right. We already have been.”

“What do people do when they’re together, anyway? The way we’re together, I mean.” Angie means to indicate “lesbians,” because she knows the script when it’s a man and woman. You date, you’re approved by one another’s parents, and you marry. Then, maybe, kids, but she doubts she’ll ever have a chance.

“Whatever we want to do.” Peggy’s hand ghosts over Angie’s hips, runs along the soft down between her legs. “What do you want to do together?”

Angie’s breathless as she opens her thighs. “Everything. Like Howard.”

They both pause in the dark.

“I meant the way Howard does anything he wants. I want that.” Angie combs her fingers through English’s curly hair. “I didn’t mean, specifically, that I wanted to do Howard.”

She can feel Peggy’s face warm beneath her hands. Then a low, approving laugh. “We could arrange both, if you want.”

They approach Howard—handsome, poised, but quietly self-doubting Howard—and ask him. He says yes as he looks at Angie. She didn’t think he would say no, though, because what man would say no to two women? Many, fine, yes, but Howard is Howard.

But when it’s all of them in bed together, Angie is the focus. Peggy only touches Howard by accident, it seems, and Howard doesn’t seem terribly interested in Peggy that way. They’re friends just as Peggy is friends with Howard’s chauffeur, Jarvis.

Growing up in a big, Italian family during the Depression has taught her not to push when she’s given more than she thought she would ever receive.

***

The acting career finally takes off. Finally! Angie can do comedy. She’s unable to use her very Anglo, very proper stage name, though. There’s another up-and-coming actress who wants to use, “Anne Martin,” and God knows “Mary Martin” is already taken. Instead, when the first of many screwball romances she’s in comes out, the credits list her as “Maria Angela Martinelli.”

Angie, Howard, and Peggy all sit in the theater together during the premiere. “They got your name wrong!” Howard shouts.

She flushes as people turn back to look. “That’s what it is!”

Howard guffaws, leans over English, and looks utterly pleased with himself. “Maria! Oh Maria, Maria, Maria!”

Peggy giggles, too.

Angie snorts and doesn’t think much of it, but then during a gala Howard throws that year, he stands up at the front of the room. Instead of saying a few words, he announces that he wants to sing the guests a small song. He eyes Angie, signals the live band, and launches into “Che La Luna Mezzo Mare” or “Lazy Mary.”

She laughs where she sits beside Peggy. They hold hands beneath the table.

The most charming of showboats, Howard strides out into the audience as he sings about a woman and her mother discussing who she should marry. The original Italian has a great deal of double entendres that he skids by without understanding. He does a little hop with each step.

When he reaches the table where she and Peggy sit, he holds out his hand. The spotlight at first shifts to Peggy. Of course it does—she’s radiant that night. She looks up at he technician, shakes her head, and points. The light then slides to Angie.

Angie stands, a little light-headed. Her actress-self loves it, though, and Howard loves it. She takes his hand and, together, they launch into a dance.

Peggy and everybody clap in time with the band.

Glancing back, Angie sees Peggy wink at her.

The story hits a gossip column in The New York Times. Angie’s mother calls to say, Well, isn’t it nice that she’s landed a rich Jew. All his money can’t change being just another one of them. “You can see it in his beady eyes,” she says.

Angie tries not to cry and fails. She hangs up on her.

There are no rules, she tells herself.

***

For a while, Howard has a separate room when he stays in the apartment. He still goes on dates with other women but he doesn’t bring them back to Angie and Peggy. Peggy has already laid down the law regarding rubbers and regular visits to the doctor. She suggests that he consider cutting down his dates altogether.

Angie is fine with Howard just the way he is. Among other things, he loves being between a woman’s thighs, tongue pushed inside her. He presses deep, insistent, and Angie is lost to fever when his mouth is on her like that.

Peggy often kisses and pets her when he does this.

Once, Angie stops kissing to run a hand along Howard’s face. He looks up, eyes heavy. His grin is wicked. She slides a thumb along his upper lip and sighs when his tongue darts out to lick her.

“I like your moustache,” she says dreamily.

He drags his jaw along her milky inner thigh. The hairs tickle and she sighs. “Our lady Maria Angela, she with the finest of tastes.”

“She does taste terribly fine.” Peggy sits up and kisses Howard, but it’s so clearly not him she’s thinking about. She’s tasting Angie on his tongue.

Angie has never seen them kiss like that before and will never see them kiss like it again. The message is simple: they’ve always been hers.

“What else do you like about me?” Howard is fishing.

“Sleeping next to you.” Angie stretches. “You’re warm. English’s feet are cold at night.”

“Cheeky,” Peggy says.

After that, when he’s home, Howard shares the king size bed. Angie is in the middle, always.

***

Angie was 22 in 1946 when she met English and Howard. In 1965, Angie is 41. Tony is a “whoops” baby but in the best possible way.

She spent years thinking she would never have the chance to have a child. Now, her acting career has stalled. The mid-1960’s have little room for a woman over the age of 40 with smile lines on her face.

Angie likes smiling, she likes that she’s about to have a baby, and she likes being over 40. She feels more confident, more possessed of her best self than she ever has.

“I want to keep it,” she says to Howard. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“It’s my kid.” His hair is white at the temples. He looks far more dashing than he has before.

“You don’t like children,” says Angie.

“I like them fine. I just don’t know how to talk to them.” Howard laughs. “But I’ll manage, I promise. And maybe you can move in? Or maybe we can marry?”

She feels as if she’s been jolted awake. “Really?”

His smile is shy as he tugs one of his ears. “Really.”

Angie goes to Peggy.

“Well, what do you want to do, my dear?” Peggy doesn’t have any gray, yet. She looks a little sad.

“I want to marry him and stay with you. You’re the love of my life.” There it is. After years of sharing a bed with her, she says the “L” word, and it’s not the one Howard teased about.

Peggy smiles but it’s hesitant. “I love you, too.”

“But I’m not the love of your life?” It dawns on Angie who would be as she says this. Peggy still keeps the photo in her desk and not one of the thousand World War II photos where Steve is strong and sure. No, he’s an absolute waif, thin and asthmatic. He’s an impossible ideal for Angie to live up to. She tries not to hate him for it.

Instead of saying it herself, Peggy kisses Angie’s cheek. “You love Howard.”

“I adore him. He would be all right if we continued like this.” Angie holds Peggy’s hand, clinging to the fingers fiercely even as she pulls away.

“I’ll always love you, but I don’t think I can continue just the way things are.” Peggy means it because her eyes are wet even as she smiles.

Peggy helps her pack her things when Angie moves out. They cry but they tell jokes, too. It’s strange. Bad, but not all bad. They were friends before and they’ll be friends again when they get through the hurt, though that takes a while.

Angie and Howard marry all of a sudden, yes, but in a lavish ceremony. The church is picked because of the windows and the way the light passes through them at midday. It’s just Howard’s style. If Mrs. Martinelli disapproves, she says nothing.

The baby’s born and Angie christens him Anthony for a dark-eyed, baby brother claimed by polio. In the hospital, they hold the baby, who’s small and pink and looks unsure whether to cry or not. Howard looks more shell-shocked than she is.

Peggy takes to him right away. When she and Angie begin to talk again, English comes to visit for long walks or an afternoon together that’s private and theirs. To the kid, Peggy calls him, “My dear boy” and talks about how wonderful babies smell.

Jarvis is, simply, delighted. Angie knows he and his wife struggled to have children for a very long time and were never able to. “Master Stark,” he says the first day and all the days after. He’s the one who rushes to dress Tony for going out, who pushes the baby carriage, and who replies first when the kid begins to babble. He’s a talker like Angie.

Angie feeds and helps Tony into his clothes, but her favorite times are when they play. She assumed he would love cowboys and had his bedroom decorated to match. Instead, he grows up loving robots and toy planes. In between digging up flowers in the yard and attempting cartwheels on the lawn, they pretend to shoot each other. When she’s out of breath, she sometimes regrets not having him younger, but would the baby she might have had at twenty-three be the same as Tony?

She spends a lot of time playing with him because she was a lonely child and so is he. In every school he attends, he has difficulty getting along with others. He shares poorly and corrects teachers when he believes they’re wrong. Angie wants to scold him over it, but instead, she’s relieved he’s inherited his father’s confidence. Anyway, playing hide-and-seek and “chase” feels like being a kid again.

Howard has a better handle over being a disciplinarian. He seems unsure how to treat Tony outside of that, though.

Angie knows Howard’s main business competitors aren’t self-made business moguls like he is, spending a childhood in a tenement as his mother and father worked half to death. His competitors are men raised in splendor like their son. Howard loves Tony, but there’s a thread of resentment.

She suspects she has her own pain she’s unwittingly passed to her son. Howard talks about Captain America with warmth and Angie sighs loudly and often when he does. “Millions of soldiers on the front and it’s the cute guy in the tights everyone remembers. He was great and I cried when the radio said he was shot down, but everyone loves him best!”

When Tony is six-years old, he asks, “Mom, who do you love best?”

“You. I love you best.”

“But not Dad?” Tony looks very serious.

“I adore Dad. I love him the way I love him. That’s all.” Angie and English have their long afternoons and Howard still goes on a date once in a while. She doesn’t have the language to articulate to her baby that it’s their own arrangement.

Tony understands something, though. He’s so bright. “But that’s not the rules! That’s not what you say. You say, ‘Your father and I love each other very much.’”

“We do, but in our own way.” They sit on the grass and she takes his hand so he must let go of his toy plane. “You make the rules, Tony. There are none except the ones you decide to follow.”

What a thing to tell a kid! But Tony looks relieved, as if she’s imparted a great secret.

***

Angie throws parties like it’s her new career. As an aging actress turned wealthy socialite, she discovers just how many New Yorkers she can wrangle into coming to fundraisers. A lot, it turns out.

Peggy is now the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Her hair is streaked with beautiful curls of gray. She can’t come to every party, no, but she always makes time to see Angie.

“My mind’s turned into a sieve.” Peggy greets her with a kiss near the dance floor. “The other day, I came home, and started to look around the apartment, wondering where you and Howard were! Isn’t that funny?”

Angie pulls her into an embrace. “I miss it, too. Care to dance?”

They waltz and people waltz with them. Nothing turns up about them dancing in the gossip columns. Angie is just another rich eccentric, doing as she pleases.

***

It’s good to sleep next to Howard, Angie thinks. It’s one of her last, confused thoughts when the car break gives out and Jarvis can’t stop. When she knows she’s about to die, she just thinks that she’s glad to have picked out a plot with Howard.

There are no regrets for her. Her life has been long in many ways. Angie’s left a small fortune to English in her will. She’ll be taken care of.

So will Angie. She loves the sureness of a peaceful grave beneath a tree. It will be a good place for Tony to visit.

The End


End file.
